RMIR: Prototype IR function in RM

[mdavej]

Yes. Forgot to mention that.

[gfb107]

The windows package already has icons for launching RMIR

[osolfan]

Yes, it probably works fine on Linux, but I prefer Open Solaris because it has better support, is much more reliable, and has ZFS and dTrace (check out ZFS - it is a really incredible 128 bit file system). But, for example, the parallel port is called /dev/ecpp0 and it uses a different driver, so to get RM to run on Open Solaris, I need the sources of jp12serial.cpp and/or jp12parallel.cpp so I can modify them to use the Solaris serial and/or parallel port drivers respectively. This is called "porting".

After 3 months I don't think these source files will be forthcoming. Instead I can probably run Linux in a VirtualBox (check it out!) on an X86 machine, but I would need to use a USB to serial or a USB to parallel adapter. I should look at the FAQ and search the lists to see if Linux RM works with these adapters (/dev/usb/lp0) e.g., with the ppdev driver., but if anyone reads this post and has a success story to report, it would be great if they could post it here.

In the mean time I think I'll build my own universal remote! Getting this to work has taken more time and effort that it's worth . It is rather disappointing that this is on Sourceforge but the sources are not available. I'd happily contribute a Solaris port if anyone is reading this
and they happen to know where these two files may be found. But with ARM microprocessors retailing for 65¢ these days...

[The Robman]

After 3 months I don't think these source files will be forthcoming. . . In the mean time I think I'll build my own universal remote! Getting this to work has taken more time and effort that it's worth .

After 3 months of what? "more time and effort that it's worth" ? This is only your second post ever in the JP1 forums, so you certainly haven't been bothering us for help with anything?

[osolfan]

Hey - you should be pleased that someone thinks so much of your effort that they'd want to port it!

If I know enough to seriously think of doing such a port, do you think I need any other hand holding? RM works great, documentation is quite usable (high praise), so I have no other questions to ask.

If I asked the question once and got no reply (especially after 3 months), why would I expect it to be answered if I asked it again? I thought that the sources were simply unavailable and wrote off the time I had spent,. RM advertised itself as Open Source. It was frustrating to be unable to find the sources and hence wasted the time it took to find that some sources were missing.

If the sources are available I would be quite happy to complete the porting effort. If not, I might try the Virtualbox approach, but I'd need to look at the FAQs etc. before asking questions that have perhaps already been answered. Or I might simply build my own remote...

I think you guys have done a great job. I'd like to help any way I can, but I simply don't have the kind of platform you wrote it for. I don't think I'm the only one...

So - perhaps you can tell me why my original question went unanswered (not that you are any compulsion to answer, of course) and are these two programs available?

[The Robman]

So - perhaps you can tell me why my original question went unanswered?

That's easy, because it was missed. Did it ever occur to you that posting a single question in a thread that is already up to 10 pages long is not a sure-fire guaranteed way of making sure that it gets seen.

RM is open source, but the i/o DLLs are not part of RM. I don't have the source to the DLLs, so hopefully the author will see your question and respond.

[osolfan]

The Robman wrote
Did it ever occur to you that posting a single question in a thread that is already up to 10 pages long is not a sure-fire guaranteed way of making sure that it gets seen

Of course it did. But it isn't clear that posting it again would have been a sure fire thing either, and other posters who have bumped their posts have been savaged. I don't see what difference it makes where it was posted; I can't believe you guys sit there re-reading posts to see if new items show up; you must have a more proactive method of being alerted. Why, it was after all an email that told me someone had posted to this thread, although I was disappointed to find that it was from a well meaning person who is probably amazed to see what they unleashed. The post prior to my original dated to November 2008 (and the post prior to that was dated Feb 2008, more than a year ago)

thingfromspace wrote
Is RMIR still being worked on?

so I really wasn't expecting any response since it did seem that perhaps RM was defunct, or no longer maintained.

The Robman wrote
i/o DLLs are not part of RM

That is part of a much larger debate and deep in the heart of GPL 3. However, the dll's (or .so's , or whatever) are essential to the operation of RM. As far as I know they have no existence or meaning outside the scope of this project and there's no point in distributing the RM source code under an Open Source license without their source code, and since there is no other way to get that code (that I know of), not distributing it IMO contravenes the spirit if not the law of the GPL. You may argue that RM is only part of the project and that it uses non-GPL'd libraries, but I don't see the point of GPLing RM since it can't run without them in any useful way.

The Robman wrote
hopefully the author will see your question

That would be great! I know that this is a labor of love and you guys have put a lot of work into it, and I know I speak for everyone about appreciating the time you take to respond to questions. But in light of the above you can perhaps appreciate that it can be disappointing, especially when you bought a remote specifically so you could use a tool which then appeared to be defunct. Ironically I was trying hard not to come across as complaining because no one should expect a reply, merely hope for one, which is what I did. My bad for not checking for the source code before I started

[The Robman]

We've seen people bump their posts an hour after making the original post, and while that may now be grounds for being "savaged" it's certainly likely to piss people off. But making one post in a busy thread and then staying quiet for 3 months is not the best way of getting noticed. If it were me, I would have started a brand new thread here in the Software forum and then if a week went by without a response, I would have done a polite bump.

I don't use the email notification because I typically answer question rather than ask them. When I log on, I use the "new posts" link to see what new posts are there and chances are, when I logged in after you made your one post 3 months ago there were already 3 or 4 posts after yours in this thread, so if I didn't read back far enough in it, I would have missed it, assuming that I actually read this thread as sometimes, if I'm busy, I just cherry pick the threads that I think I can help with and RM isn't my program, so I might have skipped it.

As for whether the DLLs are part of RM, ignoring for a moment the prototype RMIR functionality, RM is a stand alone program that doesn't need to interface with anything, so it doesn't need any DLLs, so I think I can make the case that the DLLs are not part of RM. Of course, RMIR is looking to replace IR, which does need to interface with the remote, so the DLLs are needed there.

I'm curious where the notion that RM has been abandoned came from, as Greg is constantly updating it and posting revisions.

I will PM you with some info regarding the source code.

[osolfan]

Fair enough! Etiquette does vary from one forum to another... The notion that RM had been abandoned came entirely from the fact that nothing had been posted in this thread since February of 2008 as of November 2008, and from then, nothing, until my post in January this year and again nothing until the recent posts in April.

Thanks for the PM; I'll follow up there. Glad to see RM is still active, and that RMIR is still ongoing. Maybe I'll be able to program my new remote after all, and to help with RMIR testing

[Barf]

Another area of concern is the parallel port access routine. The source doesn't seem to be available

We have the source, and if there is a need it can be made available to anyone. But we make an effort to keep the source away from prying eyes to protect UEI's intellectual property. They've been relatively supportive of us, so we try not to do anything that would jeopardize that.

Can you elaborate a bit more on this point? Is there actually UEI intellectual property (i.e. code) within the driver, or is it communication protocols that are considered proprietary, or is it that you consider the whole thing to be a too dangerous tool to put in the hands of the general public, considering product piracy etc. If it is the latter, then it is slightly more of a problem what you can do with things already available. The bad guys never ask for source, just the tools...

Anyhow, I would be very happy if the API is described somewhere. (I guess that something can be concluded from the remotemaster sources...)

[Barf]

I would like to add my 0.02 c.

The Robman wrote
i/o DLLs are not part of RM

That is part of a much larger debate and deep in the heart of GPL 3. However, the dll's (or .so's , or whatever) are essential to the operation of RM. As far as I know they have no existence or meaning outside the scope of this project and there's no point in distributing the RM source code under an Open Source license without their source code, and since there is no other way to get that code (that I know of), not distributing it IMO contravenes the spirit if not the law of the GPL. You may argue that RM is only part of the project and that it uses non-GPL'd libraries, but I don't see the point of GPLing RM since it can't run without them in any useful way.

I am also disappointed by the fact that the sources for jp1*.cpp are not available. However, the above misses the goal. It is not the case that RM (including interface libraries) is GPL software, copyrighted by someone else, modded by jp1-ers, who do not want to give out the sources, thus violating GPL. Actually, to my knowledge, there is nothing in RM that says GPL, or even "License" (which is (another) problem, btw). So the whole argument is void.

[The Robman]

Barf, what's your interest in the source? Are you volunteering to help out by writing something? If so, provisions can be made.

[tennessee titan]

I guess it should be noted that the forum is running two parallel threads on what is happening in RMIR......

[The Robman]

I guess it should be noted that the forum is running two parallel threads on what is happening in RMIR......

Not anymore, I just merged the threads.

[gfb107]

RM v1.91 has been released and includes a number of fixes/enhancements to RMIR.